The big news from Yahoo yesterday may have been the fact they has decided to add an RSS folder to Yahoo Mail as reported here by SiliconBeat. I am not part of the beta group therefore have not seen this new folder quite yet. Though to do think it will help the general non-RSS using population have a better handle on RSS. RSS folder aside, I did notice yesterday while checking my Yahoo email account that I had an unusual grayed out picture next to my name in my inbox. Upon click the image area I found out that Yahoo had implemented a new feature into Yahoo Mail in the form of Yahoo! Avatars. At first I had never seen the product before but apparently Yahoo has been offering them as an emoticon for Yahoo Instant Messenger since April of 2004. I use Trillian or AOL for instant messaging therefore was not familiar with the feature.
What is an avatar? An avatar is an icon that you can create in Yahoo similar to making a cutout character that you can customize to express yourself online. You can select what this person wears, hair color, eye color, face shape, clothing, background and even add props. Avatars also let you display your current mood similar to iMood discussed previously (September 25, 2005) on Somewhat Frank. I now am quite familiar with Avatars as you can see I have
created one here of myself, Frank Gruber, with my hazel green eyes and everything. So
now everytime I go into my Yahoo mail account I see a blinking animated image that
looks strikingly similar to me.
It appears others in the blogosphere were just as surprised to find Yahoo Avatar in their inbox judging by these posts on astrochimp, Phil's Slice and Aspiring Minimalist. I am not quite as cynical of the idea, I like it. Avatar is a cleaver name. Though it isn't new technology or groundbreaking my any means but I appreciate that Yahoo is giving me the freedom and ability to express myself in another form. In this instance it is that of an animated state with penguins at my feet.
UPDATE: My girlfriend read this post and wanted to create her own Avatar. So we had to create a Yahoo account for her but after the initial set-up she was able to create her Avatar shown here.
TrackBacks
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Yeah, the Yahoo Avatar is interesting, but I'm still unclear as to what it's purpose in Yahoo Mail is. Does it show up in emails I send? Can people sending me email see it?
There's *zero* help documentation on it at the moment, which is a bad move on Yahoo's part. When a new feature is introduced it's important to have something to let us know what it is and why we need it.
I rant about it a bit here:
http://blog.hanfordlemoore.com/2005/12/03/yahoo-mail-plus-avatar-update
http://blog.hanfordlemoore.com/2005/11/26/bad-user-interface-yahoo-mails-whats-new-page
Posted by: Hanford | Saturday, December 03, 2005 at 04:15 AM
What is this Avatar BS, another piece of garbage to clog-up the screen realestate
Posted by: mark | Sunday, December 04, 2005 at 02:02 PM
cool,
hit these url's
http://techniche.blogspot.com/2006/02/getting-your-avatars-from-yahoo.html
http://techniche.blogspot.com/2006/02/getting-your-avatars-from-yahoo_19.html
Posted by: Don | Monday, February 20, 2006 at 01:55 AM
A new online service allows users to create animated avatars with their photo. The idea consists in creating animated face avatars from simple front face pics. You can't customise your avatar further than that!
Yahoo News: Hyper-Realistic Animations of Faces From Single Photos are now a Reality at Image-me.com
http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/060410/20060410005805.html?.v=1
Image-me, http://www.image-me.com, animates pre-recorded soundbites for free or for a price tag depending of the animation and if it displays text as ecards.
Posted by: techshake | Wednesday, May 31, 2006 at 09:44 AM
What good are the avatars when you change their clothes yahoo doesn't let it show up. They have totaly messed up Easter Avatar's for the 360 blog people..Nana
Posted by: nana | Saturday, April 07, 2007 at 09:55 PM